“Are there still storage jars?”
Most of the cargo jars had been collected, and the divers had moved on to looking for smaller pieces of the shipwreck puzzle. Looking for tools and personal items from the sailors. Things the vampires had little interest in.
“That section butts up to the reef, so it’s been harder to sift through.” Fabia swam over to Jon and Ben followed.
He saw her switch radio frequencies to the public channel, so he did too.
“That section by the reef.” She pointed to it. “Has it been excavated yet?”
“Meili was working there,” Jon said. “I suppose we haven’t wanted to disturb it.”
“Would you like me to examine it?”
“You may, of course. We would be grateful for the help. I would be happy to assist you myself tomorrow.” He pointed to Lin. “Each section is a two-person job.”
Lin pushed the button on her microphone. “I am taking tomorrow off.”
“Good.” Fabia pointed to the wrecked hull. “I’ll take a look today, but I’ll make sure I don’t move anything without taking notes.”
Jon gave her a thumbs-up and got back to his work. Ben and Fabia swam over to Meili’s section of the wreck.
The whole of the wreck had been thoroughly photographed, but Fabia still took out her notebook and began diagraming each coral formation and outcropping of sediment. Ben watched a small yellow fish poke out from the coral and look at them with round eyes. The little creature darted away when they moved closer, churning up a small puff of sand that had gathered on the coral and revealing a glint that caught Ben’s attention.
“Fabia?”
She moved closer. “Hmm?”
Ben held his finger up to his mask. Quiet. Then he took his hand and waved it over the section where the fish had fled. The water surged over the coral, revealing more of the color Ben had noticed.
Fabia held up a hand and moved her pencil rapidly over her notebook. She showed Ben where she’d made a note of the artifact before she gave him a thumbs-up again.
Ben pushed more water toward the lump. It had small growths on it that must have been various types of coral, but it wasn’t secured to the reef. He reached under and grabbed the edge of the small glass bar, sliding it from under the piled rocks and corals.
He held it up, and Fabia reached for her pencil.
It’s like the one Mr. Lu found.
What?
He found another bar like this with writing. Ben pointed to the wrecked hull and piled rocks. We may find more glass in this section.
And more glass means?
Harun worked in glass and metal.
Understanding, Fabia took the glass artifact from Ben and tucked it in the small net pocket on her belt before she gave him the sign to surface.
They swam up, then over to the ladder fixed to the side amidships. Climbing up, they handed up the notebooks on frames first, then took the hands of the crew who helped them on deck and removed their tanks and masks.
Once they’d dropped their equipment, Ben and Fabia walked over to the tanks where Fabia wrote up a tag and placed the glass bar in the correct tank.
“So you’re saying there might be more glass in that section?” She kept her voice low.
“More important, that might be where the sword is,” he said. “Harun worked in glass and in metal. He made the sword. He made the glass pieces. Tenzin translated the other bar Mr. Lu found. It was a manifest of items from Harun’s workshop. He wanted Zhang to know which things came from him, I guess.”
Fabia rolled her eyes.
Ben asked, “Do you know what this means?”
“Artists have egos no matter what century it is?”
“No, Fabi—I mean yeah, obviously—but that means Meili was working in the section where Harun’s glass tablet was found. Meaning—”
“Whoever killed Meili might have taken the tablet from her.” Fabia’s face went pale. “But why? It was a list. Just a list.”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “But I do know I’m going down there without the university team. Tonight. We need to figure out what Meili found.”
24
Fabia was helping Ben suit up. “I don’t like the idea of you going down by yourself.”
“You did three dives today,” he said. “I did two. Also, I want you up here on the radio. I won’t be able to avoid Johari, Cheng, and Kadek, but they won’t be able to hear what we’re saying. I don’t trust any of them, and I want someone up here I can talk to.”
“Four dives isn’t out of the safety realm, Ben. It’s not that deep. We can get Tenzin on the radio so I can go down with you.”
“You’re joking, right?” He adjusted his belt. “Tenzin on the radio? She’d break it.”
“Night dives are no joke,” Fabia said. “It’s a completely different world down there at night.”
“And we already have lights on the area,” he said. “I have a headlamp. I’ll stay down for thirty minutes, max. But I need to be able to dig in there when the other humans aren’t looking. And I don’t want to clue Cheng and Kadek in on it. They’re the ones who have been swiping artifacts as it is.”
“And Johari? You’re going to need her help to move that rock.”
He paused. “You’ve been working with her for weeks now. Have you ever gotten suspicious? She’s quiet and hardworking. She’s pleasant to the humans and respectful of the crew. Nothing about her says she’s a thief.”
“She turned a rock in to me the other day. She thought it looked like it might have had writing on it, so it could have been an artifact.”
“Did it?”
“No. Just some odd scrapes, but I did have to check.”
“See?” He glanced around. “I’m sure Kadek killed Meili. He’s loyal to Cheng and no one else. He’s annoyed by humans and only likes the ones who defer to him in everything.”
“Be careful, Ben.”
“I’m not going to be by myself. You’ll be on the radio. Besides, no one is going to try anything with witnesses.”
“Still—”
“Stop worrying.” He took her by the shoulders, kissed her forehead, and picked up his fins. “Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.”
Ben walked to the edge of the deck and waited for the crew to open the railing so he could climb down and enter the water. He fixed his mask and pushed the microphone button.
“Fabi, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Going under.”
Ben sank beneath the water and was immediately seized by the creeping cold that slipped along his spine. The water was warm, but far cooler than the air above. He immediately flipped on his headlamp and allowed himself to sink to the ocean floor where underwater floodlights marked the edges of the site.
The lights turned the water an eerie blue green; it rippled like a living thing. Shadow and light were starker in the nighttime, and among the fantastical corals and wrecked hull, the three vampires moved at speeds so quick watching them threatened to make Ben nauseous.
“Ben, you all right?”
He pushed his button. “I’m good. For some reason I assumed they’d be slower underwater. Johari’s a little slower, but not Cheng and Kadek.”
“What does it look like?”
“Honestly?” The comparison was too apt. “Sharks. Really fast sharks.”
“You know, I was hoping you were going to say mermaids.”
“Nope. Definitely not mermaids, though I guess Cheng has the hair for it.”
Fabia laughed.
With the grace of apex predators, Cheng and Kadek moved with sinuous efficiency. While they were still removing artifacts, they were hunting as well, searching the perimeter of the wreck for signs of tossed artifacts or scattered debris before they returned to the hull.
Johari worked on the hull, continuing to coax sediment away from the cargo hold of the ship, using hand motions to alert the other vampires when a new section had been cleared. Watching h
er was astonishing. The sediment around each fixed object seemed to melt away under her hands, revealing perfectly intact objects that had been hidden for over a thousand years.
“I wish so hard I could video this,” he said. “It’s amazing.”
“I wish I could see it,” she said through the radio. “I may have to go down tomorrow night.”
“It’s pretty damn cool.”
Ben headed for the end of the wrecked hull where Meili had been working. He swam down, focusing his light on the base of the coral, but it was far more compacted than he remembered. The coral sat atop a section of hull that had broken off, blocking the area beneath it and whatever might have been stored there. It wasn’t a large portion, and if he hadn’t been looking, he would have thought it was simply part of the reef.
“I’m getting Johari.”
He motioned to Johari, who held up her hand in the universal signal to wait.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not going to be able to move this without her.”
“Okay.” She sounded skeptical.
“I couldn’t move this with a sledgehammer, Fabi, and I don’t want to be that destructive if I can help it.”
“Just be careful.”
Ben had cleared some of the loose rocks and debris from the base of the collapsed hull by the time Johari swam over. He couldn’t talk to her, but he motioned to the portion of the hull he wanted to lift, hoping she got the idea.
She nodded and began to slowly move the section of rock the coral had attached to, probably hoping to disturb the reef as little as possible. She waved at him to get back, so he moved and allowed her to work.
“Okay, you’re not gonna be happy what we’re doing here,” Ben said. “But she’s moving it.”
“How many coral are you killing?”
“As few as possible.” It was the truth. The rocks moved far more slowly than the sediment. Johari had her hands under them, and it almost looked like she was very slowly shifting a crusted-over Volkswagen.
“The hull is pulling away with the rocks,” Ben said. “I can see what’s underneath now.”
“What is it?”
He swam down and managed to take a peek before Johari whacked the back of his head with her hand. He looked up. She pointed to where Ben had been waiting.
Get back. Her glare was unmistakable.
“I need to wait until she’s finished with the rocks.”
“Okay.”
He checked his watch. He’d already been under for fifteen minutes. He had enough air in his tanks for an hour, but he’d promised Fabia he’d only be gone a half an hour.
Five minutes later, Johari waved him over. Ben lowered himself to the sea floor and began brushing away the sediment with the tools Fabia had given him before Johari held her hand out and the sediment began to melt away from the dark lumps that had been hiding.
“Fabia, there are glass ingots.”
“Colored ones?”
He grabbed the flashlight from his belt and shined it and his headlamp where Johari’s hands moved. “Yes.”
There was bright red and brilliant green. But more than anything, there was blue. Rich, cobalt-blue glass that winked at him from the bottom of the ocean like colorful cabochon jewels.
Ben’s heart was racing. While nothing about the glass ingots was sexy, he was taken by the thrill of the hunt. He was uncovering something that had remained hidden for a thousand years. Glass ingots poured in the fires of Damascus, brought by caravan to be loaded onto a ship that traveled thousands of miles, only to sink on the bottom of the ocean floor.
Ben said, “So Meili was definitely on track to find Harun’s glass.”
“Do you think that’s why…?”
“Why would that put her in danger?” Ben asked. “That’s what I don’t get. It’s just glass. There are mountains of way fancier glass pieces all through the wreck.”
Just as he turned his radio off, Johari’s hand stroked through the water, moving a broad swath of sediment and rock to reveal…
Not an ingot.
Ben swam closer. What on earth?
From the outside, it looked like the other ingots, but instead of being one round lump, this was long. It must have been three feet at least. It looked like an enormous loaf of bread made of frosted red glass.
“Fabi, I found something weird.”
“Tell me more.”
“I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s a few ingots fused?” He looked at Johari, who shrugged and shook her head. “Yeah, Johari has no idea what it is either.”
She motioned toward the main part of the hull where Kadek and Cheng were working. Then she curved her arms and made a carrying gesture before she swam away.
“I think she’s going to get a basket.”
“Good idea.”
Ben went closer to the glass object. He wished the glass wasn’t so frosted, but maybe if he shined his light closer…
Ben turned his headlamp off and brought up his smaller flashlight. He pressed it to the surface of the glass and saw a shadow.
What the hell?
He moved the small flashlight around, trying to illuminate the ingot. It was fixed to the ocean floor, so he couldn’t lift it. Ben put his flashlight on the far side of the object, propping it on the rocks and lying flat on the ocean floor to look through the other side.
The outline of a hilt was unmistakable.
Laylat al Hisab.
The sword was encased in glass, sealed away from the elements by the fire master who had forged it. Ben moved the flashlight down, seeing the shadow of a perfectly preserved blade.
He nearly cried with joy. It wasn’t ruined. Despite everything, despite the years and the miles and a thousand years of corrosive seawater, it had endured.
He pushed the microphone button. “Fabi, you’re not going to believe—”
The pain in his back was quick, silent, and unmistakable.
Ben gasped. Then everything went numb. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. He couldn’t push the button on his microphone.
“Ben?” Fabia’s voice on the radio.
He felt an odd tugging in his belly, and he looked down to see a silver blade pinning him to the ocean floor. His body drifted in the tug of the current, and a black flower bloomed beneath him.
“Hey Ben, get back to me.”
Johari swam in front of him. She didn’t look at him at first. She methodically removed the sword case from the sediment that held it, then she looked up.
Her eyes weren’t sad, but they weren’t empty either, and Ben felt oddly grateful that she felt something as she killed him.
“Ben, what’s going on? I need to hear your voice.”
Why? He felt his lips form the words.
Her eyes were resolute. She mouthed, I’m sorry.
Johari lifted the sword case and swam away, leaving Ben in the darkness. Leaving him unable to move, drifting in a growing cloud of his own blood.
Would the sharks come?
Would the vampires?
“Ben!”
He let the tears come to his eyes, and he was grateful to feel their heat in the dark, cold water.
Tenzin.
She woke from her meditation with a rapid burst of three heartbeats.
She sat straight up. “Benjamin.”
She was stripped down to a pair of short leggings and a black tank top. It was too hot for anything else. She heard distant footsteps and the sound of panting.
Someone beat on her door and screamed, “Tenzin, you have to come now!”
The Italian girl.
Benjamin.
Tenzin didn’t waste time with the door. She flew up and forced the forward-hold doors open with a punch of wind. She flew straight up and over the ship, immediately scenting his blood and flying straight for it.
No.
No. No. NO.
This. Would not. Happen.
Cheng was carrying him across the deck. “Get back! And get Tenzin right now!”
She saw it in the deck lights. The sword pierced his back, running straight through his spine to his belly. His limbs were limp and motionless, encased in the black diving suit he wore underwater. She could hear his heart beating.
Cheng laid him on his side, and crew members crowded around him. The ship’s medic was running toward them with a white bag while two humans ran, carrying a stretcher behind them.
Tenzin landed in a crouch next to Ben and snarled at the humans. “Get. Back.”
Cheng gently removed the mask. “His tank was still working. He’s still breathing. He didn’t run out of air. I smelled the blood as soon as I got in the water and swam straight for him.”
Ben was pale, but his eyes were open.
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Hey, Tiny.”
25
Ben was drifting in and out of consciousness as Cheng and Tenzin fought.
“I’m calling the helicopter.”
“They won’t be able to fix him.”
“He’s not dead! Whoever meant to kill him failed. We can save his life.”
Tenzin crouched next to Benjamin, stroking a hand over his cold cheek. “He will not die.”
Cheng gripped her shoulder and shook it. “Do not do this. He didn’t want it. You know he didn’t want it.”
The Italian girl was standing in the crowd, sobbing. “Someone do something! Take the sword out of him, Madonna, take it—”
“Do not touch the sword!” Cheng and Tenzin both roared.
Her eyes rose to meet Cheng’s. He had been in battle. He knew exactly what kind of wound this was.
“He might not die,” she said quietly. “But he’ll never walk. He’ll never climb a mountain. He’ll never fly if the humans are allowed to heal him.”
“He did not want this.” Cheng shook his head slowly. “I won’t do it.”
She watched Ben’s eyes. They were open, but he wasn’t listening to them. He was in too much pain. “I’m not asking you.”
Cheng reached for her wrist as Tenzin moved to lift Ben, but she snarled and bared her teeth.
He whispered, “He will not forgive you, Cricket.”
She looked at Ben. Looked at Fabia crying. Looked at the panicked faces of the human crew. Looked back at Cheng.
Night’s Reckoning: An Elemental Legacy Novel Page 21